currently in: Myrtle Beach, SC, but hopefully not for long

Has it really been a week since the last update here? Fortunately, our silence is due not to disaster or lack of news, but to simply being too darn busy to sit down at the computer and compose a post. We've been re-installing our gear, fixing the little things that have broken in our absence, and buying the things we need to get ready for our cruise.

When we arrived at the boatyard on Monday morning, the lift was already in place around our boat. There was some hemming and hawing and critical looks at the strap arrangement before everyone was satisfied, but finally we were hoisted in the air and driven down the road, where I touched up the bottom paint on the keel...and then Windom was gently lowered into the water.

This was the moment of truth. Not, would we float? (we were confident on that point) or even, would the engine start? (since we had tested it while on the hard), but: would I be able to steer us into our assigned slip without hitting anything? After all, it had been nearly two years since the last time I'd been behind the wheel. Steering a boat at low speed is almost completely unlike driving a car: there's no brake, only forward and reverse, the pivot is in the rear rather than in the front, wind affects different parts of the boat differently (and much stronger than it does vehicles!) - it's a matter of calculating and controlling your momentum, rather than pointing and shooting. No matter how much boat-driving I do, I always get nervous in close-quarters maneuvering.

When I asked George, the marina owner, where we'd be berthed - confessing that I wanted to scope it out ahead of time so I'd feel more confident coming in - he commented that it seemed like it was always the sailboats with the most cruising equipment that were the worst at coming into a dock. Which is, of course, perfectly true: We cruisers are out there sailing, not docking! But the pressure was on, so when we got in the water, my heart was pounding.

But I shouldn't have worried; It's funny how quickly it all comes back. For both of us: I slid Windom right into the slip, and Britt figured out exactly what lines we needed and where we needed them, tying us up quickly and securely. Just like riding a bicycle, I guess - your body remembers, even if your brain forgets.

In fact, now that we've been living aboard again for not quite a week, we've noticed how easy it's been to pick up where we left off two years ago. When we started putting the boat back together, I was hit by a wave of nostalgia as I recognized all the things we'd left here (the plates! The books! The Scrabble board!); we instinctively reached for the grab rail when we went down the companionway, and ducked our heads so as to not smack against the low ceiling when we sat at the nav station. But actually living aboard takes things one step further, as we go through the remembered motions of daily life.

If you add together all the time we've lived on Windom - our first three and a half year cruise, plus the winter of 2004-05 - it's longer than we've lived in our current house in Durango. So maybe it's not strange that it seems so comfortable and natural to move cushions out of the way to get to the cookies or to flush the toilet by pumping a handle. We have fallen naturally into the shared language we developed to describe the storage areas (the coconut locker, the safety locker, the coffin), and Britt can get out of bed without waking me up (a serious accomplishment, because he has to crawl over me to do so).

My parents came down to visit for a couple of days, and together we took a shakedown cruiselet down the ICW to a quiet little anchorage in a National Wildlife Refuge. Although we'd taken them for a daysail on the Chesapeake once, this was the first time they'd ever spent the night aboard. As we apologetically asked them to move aside so we could get something out from under the settee, or explained how to operate the head, they shook their heads and commented that living on a boat seemed so complicated. Well, of course it is - if you're not used to it. But for us, Windom is the house we used to live in, and dealing with the vagaries of boat life is like automatically stepping over the first stair on the staircase because it squeaks, or turning the knob on the downstairs faucet the "wrong" way because that's how it was installed by the idiot who lived there before. We don't need to think about its quirks - they're already in our bones.

And when we returned to Hague Marina after our little overnight, I maneuvered us into the slip just as neatly as you please - and I think my parents actually thought I knew what I was doing!

I'm starting to get antsy about slipping the docklines for good, now. There are still tasks to be done, and this is a convenient place to do them - we have a loaner car at the marina, and occasional internet access, and we know where the West Marine and supermarkets are. On the other hand, if we stay here until every last problem is solved and task is completed, we'll never go anywhere!